Intel Haswell-E Price List Spotted – Shows Price Increase for all SKUs, i7-5960X Costing a Massive $1108

Usman Pirzada

Intel's HEDT (High End Desktop) has always been somewhat of a roller coaster ride with its loyal consumers one or two architectural generations behind the mainstream consumer processors. Intel offsets this lag in the process by giving a higher core count which translates to 4 threads on the high end model. However this does not come cheap because even though we had authentic reports that most of the Haswell-E pricing wouldn't change, an online retailer Shopblt.com has listed them far more expensive than Ivy Bridge-E.Intel Broadwell and Haswell Refresh Platform

Haswell-E Intel HEDT Processors Price List Spotted at Online Retailed

Now here's the thing. Intel has adopted a two year architectural life span for HEDT instead of the mainstream yearly strategy. So that means Intel either has to skip generations for its HEDT spectrum or let it fall behind the mainstream spectrum. Ofcourse the profit motive dictates that Blue follows the latter. However with Haswell-E, modest IPC gains will get blown away by not 2 but 4 more cores than consumers. That is twice the cores that mainstream offers and that's 8 more threads for an absolutely stunning total of 16 threads. This is how Intel compromised and tried to get into the good graces of the hardcore enthusiasts. It all seemed to make sense when we heard that pricing wont change except for the i7-5820K and that was only because it was getting two more cores (i7-4820K was a Quad Core). However, if this online retailer Shopblt.com is correct than it would appear that Intel is getting ready to squeeze some extra cash again.

Model Intel Core i7-5960X Intel Core i7-5930K Intel Core i7-5820K
Platform Haswell-E Haswell-E Haswell-E
Process 22nm 22nm 22nm
Cores/Threads 8/16 6/12 6/12
Cache 20 MB L3 15 MB L3 15 MB L3
Core Clock 3.0/3.3 GHz 3.5/3.9-4.0 GHz 3.3/3.6-3.8 GHz
Socket LGA 2011-3 LGA 2011-3 LGA 2011-3
TDP 140W 140W 140W
Memory DDR4-2133 MHz DDR4-2133 MHz DDR4-2133 MHz
Chipset X99 X99 X99
Alleged Pricing H-E (IVB-E) $1108 ($999) $632 ($583) $323 ($426)

Now the i7-5820K will be priced at $426 which is approximately $100 more than the i7-4820k. The i7-5930K will be priced at $632 which is approximately $50 more expensive. Similarly the i7-5960X will be priced at $1108 which means that once again Intel is charging a premium of $100 for two extra cores. Now this is one of the reasons I took this price list seriously. The price bump makes perfect sense if you think about it. $100 for 2 more cores and $50 for just an architectural change. The pricing also makes more sense this time around than the price list for Ivy Bride-E which was absolutely absurd (Intel was charging $440 for 3MB of L3 cache on the top model). The fact still remains that you plopping down upwards of a grand for a processor. It is upto the specific professional or enthusiast to determine whether the price is justified or not.

Share this story

Deal of the Day

Comments